Two weeks into our big media experiment, things are looking great

Over 900 ordinary people have invested in New Internationalist's community share offer already!

If we’d said last month that we would attract more than £200,000 – yes, two-hundred-thousand pounds! – in investment from 900 ordinary people in just two weeks, you probably wouldn’t have believed it. We certainly hardly dared to dream it. But here we are, one day shy of two weeks, with 40 per cent of our target met.

It’s thanks to all you early-adopters that we are now approaching the halfway point, with just over three weeks to go. Your reasons for investing are diverse; some have read New Internationalist since the early days and others have only just heard of our existence. But the thing that unites all our new co-owners is the belief that a better world is possible.

Why you value what we do

We are bolstered every day by the many lovely messages you send us. Some readers were kind enough to record their reasons for investing on camera, which warms our hearts every time (we like to replay it here in the Oxford office to keep spirits up!).

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The Crowdfunder Comments page shows what a lovely bunch you are too (we’d love it if you leave a note here if you haven’t already done so):

Mr. Pattinson wrote: ‘In a world with so much distorted and fake news New Internationalist is a breath of fresh air. You cannot make a better investment if you care about what is really going on in the world.’

And another co-owner Phil said: ‘We need more innovative schemes like this to take the news away from the media moguls who do not hold anyone's interests to heart except their own.’

Media interest

Meanwhile, our bold intiative has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the media. Feisty news site The Canary gave us a roaring endorsement under the headline ‘A world famous magazine is about to shake up the whole media industry’ and our local paper The Oxford Mailpicked up on our support from celebrities such as Emma Thompson and Jarvis Cocker. If you missed previous coverage of the campaign, including BBC Oxford, TechCrunch, Press Gazette and Co-op News, we have published a round-up on our website.

How you can help

The halfway point is nearing, and with it our campaign deadline. We still have a long way to go to reach our all-or-nothing target of £500,000. We will need to reach many more people over the coming days and weeks to secure the future of our – and your! – media co-operative.
We know it really does work when you share the www.factsandheart.org link. The crowdfunder site shows us that investments are coming in through Facebook posts, tweets and forwarded emails. To make it really easy to share the details of the campaign with zero hassle, we've made you these one-click buttons with ready-made messages for a Twitter post and a Facebook post. And there's still time to join our Thunderclap which will spread the word far and wide.

If all of us managed to convince one friend, family member or colleague to a become co-owner too, we’d be almost there.

Three weeks and over £280,000 to go – let’s make history together by becoming the biggest community-owned media co-op in the world!

It’s a critical time to build media that brings people together – not drives them apart. That means journalism that creates an inclusive global community, and emphasizes that the struggles of people are often in opposition to the same elite-driven globalization and share the same aspiration to a global, common good.

At New Internationalist, we have never had a rich benefactor or a media tycoon bankrolling what we do. So it makes sense for us to turn to our readers to help shape the kind of journalism that makes the case for something better.

On 1 March, we launched an ambitious Community Share Offer, opening up ownership of New Internationalist to ordinary people all over the world. If you are interested in joining us, visit factsandheart.org.

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